


One Tiny Right Thing

by JessaLRynn



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 13:57:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3122744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What did a Time Lord care about Christmas?  More, what did a Time Lord care about Christmas in February?</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Tiny Right Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Time and Chips 2012 Advent Calendar over at LJ. Happy Christmas, one and all.

"I feel as if I missed Christmas," the Doctor said.

Rose, startled from her reverie by the Doctor's unexpected, blurted sentence, looked up at him and blinked. She realized, only then, that she'd been falling asleep on his chest, despite the cold of the Powell Estate rooftop. "You what?" she mumbled, and tried to pretend she hadn't been about six seconds from drooling into his coat pocket.

"Christmas," he said, proclaimed really, and then he bolted to his feet, his ability to stay still exhausted by however long it had taken her to almost nod off. "I feel like I missed it this year, you know?"

"Um…" Rose swiped at her face, but getting her hair out of her eyes and her mouth did nothing to make her best friend less baffling. What did a Time Lord care about Christmas? More, what did a Time Lord care about Christmas in February? "You didn't, though," she reminded him, "we were right here, remember?" She grinned, then, as the picture of the memory came to life in her mind's eye. "You had a pink hat and got a plastic train."

The Doctor paced toward the edge of the roof, then back toward her, and grinned, fondly. "Oh, yes, I remember that," he said enthusiastically. His bright nod abruptly cut off into a pout. "We didn't have a tree," he said.

"We did," Rose explained. "It tried to kill us."

The Doctor waved it off with a large, gangly wave, and Rose felt something go bang inside her chest. He was the only person in the universe who could wave off a homicidal Christmas tree, well, him and her because she was with him. "I mean a proper tree, with stars and fairy light and tinsel and things."

"If it had tinsel, it might've choked me," Rose pointed out accurately.

"I'd've stopped it," the Doctor asserted proudly, and Rose just grinned at him, because he might've, except that he'd been unconscious.

"Well, what do you want to do about it?" she asked instead, because he had a plan. That much was obvious in his shining eyes.

"Let's go to the mall," he said.

Rose stared at him. "You what?" she said again, and it was amazing how much less sense he was making, a good five minutes into the conversation, than the no sense he'd been making when he started.

"Christmas shopping, Rose!" he exclaimed. He caught her hands and Rose caught his enthusiasm, and without a word to Jackie, or a reason that would've made sense to her either, they were off.

*?*

"When you said the mall," Rose said, "I thought you meant… I dunno what I thought. Not this." She swept her hand out over the railing, gesturing out at the mile high Christmas tree that loomed in the center of a shopping mall larger than the island nation of her birth.

The Doctor grinned in triumph. Rose was smiling. At last, at long last, she was really and truly smiling. Mind, at the most she was also looking completely pole-axed, but her astonishment was happy, and the Time Lord was relieved.

Ever since Mickey had left, she'd been quiet and strange, guilty and thoughtful. He'd been afraid, at first, that she'd wanted to leave him, had brought her back to Jackie so she could if she wanted, even though it killed him inside.

He'd found solace in the down time, really, in lazing about on Jackie's couch, in listening as Rose waxed philosophical late in the night, in making breakfast for three and only burning the toast once. But watching Rose stay so sad was more than he could bear. As he'd tried to sort out what best to show her to revive the light in her eyes, it was Rose's own words that came to mind, words about Christmas, and the way she'd just stood there and glowed while she said them, and how he'd basked, actually preened, in the warmth of her spontaneous poetry.

She made him better, always, and he wanted to make her better, too.

He flicked a credit chip at her, grinning like a maniac when she eyed it almost warily. "What'd'ya say we hit the stores, Rose Tyler?" he offered.

"How many stores ARE there?" Rose wondered.

The Doctor paused, trying to remember. "Let's see. They built this mall in the early fifty-first century to take up the entirety of the Areatrix Continent, and then there was the renovation, where they went up, since they couldn't go out, and it's now…" He paused to do some math, scribbled out his figures in the air, added up the column again, and then sighed. "Enough, I think?" he said.

"Yeah," Rose agreed, "enough. So, who're we buying prezzies for?"

"Everyone?" he offered, and held out his arm. Rose shrugged, nodded, and took hold of his elbow. "Yeah, everyone," he decided, and they were off.

*?*

"I love this thing," Rose announced, some seven hours later.

The Doctor, adding yet more packages onto the little anti-grav cart that obediently followed them, shrugged. "I had a dog that used to follow me," he said.

"We've met," Rose reminded him. "Didn't float."

"Thought about it a couple times," he admitted. "Thought about a lot of things."

"I know," Rose said, cheerfully. "Heaven knows I know." She elbowed him and the Doctor elbowed her, and they laughed and chased each other up and down the corridor while the baffled little cart just hovered there, uncertainly.

Rose couldn't believe how much energy the Doctor could get from shopping in a huge mall, just because instead of their usual every day busy, these people were happy holiday busy. He was enthusiastic and cheerful, full of praise for beings from a hundred worlds, all buying gifts for whatever winter holiday they celebrated, and planning things to do for whatever days they took away from their jobs. Rose herself rarely tired of shopping, at least not as long as everyone remained reasonably pleasant to the shop assistants.

By the same token, she now wanted the TARDIS to drop off their stuff, and maybe a trans-galactic Starbucks. She looked around. "Where the heck are we, anyway?"

"Fifty-sixth floor?" the Doctor asked. He looked around for some sign of the Christmas decorations at least. There was nothing, just empty corridor, and maybe an empty store up on the left a hundred meters or so. "More like the eighty second, I'm guessing."

"That's probably about right," she said. "Fifty-sixth was Macy's II and the hologram shop."

"Right, right. Why'd we come here, then?"

Rose frowned. She'd… wanted to see what was up here? Thought they should? Something. "Dunno," she said, and looked around at nothing much. "Wasn't worth it, I guess."

The Doctor whipped out the sonic and his glasses and Rose giggled while he took some readings and muttered. It was unbelievable how something so simple as glasses could make a too-skinny man in a big brown coat look like… well, like he really needed those glasses steamed up, if she was honest.

He was frowning. Rose realized then that the fun and games were probably over. She looked at the cart. "Can you find our ship?" she asked it.

It whirred and whistled, and then plinged at her. She took that as a sort of machine yes and nodded. "Well, go wait there, then, please. Thanks." The little cart wandered off, and Rose thought if it was a person, it might've been whistling.

She turned to the Doctor again, only to find him scanning the empty floor around them, sweeping the area with the screwdriver while he tried to get a read on whatever had gotten his attention. Rose shook her head, and couldn't help smiling as he rubbed the back of his neck and turned to the left again. "What is it?" she asked.

"Something that isn't supposed to be here," the Doctor said. He looked up at her and blinked at her over the top of his glasses. "And something you don't have to worry about. This is supposed to be fun. Why don't you go wait by the…"

"Have you met me?" Rose asked sarcastically. "When've I ever done that?"

The Doctor frowned thoughtfully and tapped his lip with one long finger. "Maybe… um… Satellite Five?"

"Yeah, for maybe like five minutes." She decided not to remind him of the full details, lest they have that old argument at the worst possible time. "C'mon, what is it?" she wheedled.

"If I'm right, and I really, really, really hope I'm not, which is not something I like to say, not really, because I always prefer to be right, but just this once it might be nice to be wrong, because if I'm not then it's Tetraps, and that's about as bad as it can possibly get in this corner of the universe."

"On a scale of Slitheen to Daleks?" Rose questioned.

"Krillitanes," the Doctor replied, giving his hand a little twist to indicate that he might need a few points wiggle room.

"So a whole extra suitcase of bad, again," Rose agreed, and bent down to check her laces. When she stood up, she found the Doctor staring at something, and she had to get his attention. "Oi, my eyes are up here, yeah?" she teased.

The Doctor flinched guiltily, and Rose felt her heart flutter at the possibility that he really had been staring at her bum. She blinked, he blinked. They ignored it.

"Right, Tetraps. They used to be a sort of simple-minded bat creature, but that was a long time ago. They got hold of a scientist to help them sort out most of their weaknesses, and while they were at it, they managed to pick up a number of their re-creator's more despicable habits. That's why I'm hoping I'm wrong."

"Can't blame you there," Rose said, and she followed him up the corridor, anyway, wondering if it was her imagination that the Doctor looked a little stormier than usual.

Then, she happened to catch a reflection from the abandoned storefront ahead of them. Snow was pouring in, icy and unexplained, from somewhere she couldn't see, and there was a funny, off-reddish light, turning the snow a sickly puce. She hardly noticed that, nor the destroyed remains of a tinsel tree in the window, not even the strangely shaped toy spaceships dangling there, precariously. All Rose could see was, "Doctor, there's a kid."

*?*

The Doctor bounced off the force shield before the sonic screwdriver even picked it up. He blinked at it in confusion, and kicked at the shield, but there was no way through, nothing. Then, the Tetraps, big, ugly, rodent things that they were, came lumbering out to take a look. He glared at the two large, multi-eyed creatures. They returned his gaze with that familiar, coldly fascinated blankness. There were some creatures that Time Lords should leave alone, and there were some Time Lords that should never be allowed near creatures, and these things were the result of both.

"Whatever you're doing here, you will stop it, now," the Doctor ordered, matching their cold indifference with his own icy rage.

"The experiment will be allowed to complete," one of them said, and the other touched a series of buttons on a wrist device it wore. The two vanished, transmatted away in a shower of blue glitter.

The Doctor swore. "I'd forgotten," he complained. "They start doing experiments in this area over the next few years, starting with single things like abductions, and escalating to invasion. They become the most terrible creatures…"

"What happens to them?" Rose asked quietly.

"Eventually something stops them," the Doctor informed her, and he knew it was probably going to be him. He didn't think, from the look in Rose's eyes as she watched the boy huddle, cold, inside the force shield, that she would place her priorities on stopping him.

"We've got to do something," she said, and she went to thump her fist on the shield next to where the Doctor's hand still lay, fruitlessly reaching.

Rose's hand fell through.

*?*

"It's down to you, Rose," the Doctor said, and Rose could read the consternation in his face. She pulled his coat up tighter around her ears, and nodded.

The Doctor kicked the barrier one more time. They'd taken only a few minutes to debate why it would let her through and not the Doctor, but there were too many variables between them, from gender to age to shoe size to species.

Rose squared her shoulders, tightened her grip on the sonic screwdriver, and stepped through the force shield. It was a bit like walking through a waterfall, she decided, only the water stayed on while allowing her to breathe. She still felt herself being pushed at, but it wasn't even hard to move, just a little slow.

She became aware of the little boy's crying before she'd reached him. She flicked the sonic at the door of the unused store, looking back at the Doctor, for reassurance, she supposed. He beamed at her and gave a cheery thumbs-up and Rose felt immediately better.

"You all right?" she called to the boy as she opened the door. She immediately got a face full of snow for her pains. She sputtered and brushed at it, and realized it was like being inside a snow cone machine.

The kid was probably in trouble, if it was this cold just on the outskirts. Rose tugged the Doctor's coat tighter, and dragged herself, shivering, through the freezing onslaught. It seemed to take too long, but she mercifully didn't have far to go.

"Take my hand," she shouted, holding her trembling fingers out in the direction she was sure she'd last seen the boy. Nothing. "Please," Rose begged, unable to even contemplate leaving him. "I can't see you, you've got to reach for me."

Something small and icy brushed Rose's hand. She yelped, but fought her instinct to pull away, and grasped it tighter, tugging hard. The boy was in her arms in an instant. She was wrapping him up in the Doctor's coat before she even knew she had a good grip on him, and the boy clung to her, tearfully, wonderfully alive.

Rose was laughing when she carried him back through the force shield, laughing because the boy was safe, because the horrible monsters had let them escape, because no one had died. She sobered only at the Doctor's serious, haunted expression as he considered the small, sandy blond burrowing into her as if she was the source of the warmth he needed.

The Time Lord held out his hand and Rose handed him the sonic screwdriver. The Doctor took it, and then pulled her close, wrapping her and the child up in a comforting embrace. Rose snuggled, reveled in it, while the boy still trembled, but seemed to grow warmer as they held him.

The Doctor's lips brushed across Rose's forehead, and he yelped and yanked his mouth away, even as his arms pulled her tighter. "You're like ice!" he whinged, and Rose couldn't help a snicker, and then the Doctor snickered too.

They might've fallen apart laughing like idiots, one of their favorite ways to release their fears, but the boy finally moved, peaking up at them from his Doctor's coat cocoon. "Who're you guys?" he asked, a completely coherent, miraculously logical sentence.

Rose hugged him happily, and the Doctor clapped the boy on the back, and hugged them both. The vividly sparkling green eyes considered them like a pair of admittedly helpful lunatics.

*?*

"How're we ever gonna find his parents?" Rose asked, as she and the Doctor waded through a remarkably thick crowd surrounding the Santa's Court feature at the very center of the mall.

The Doctor just shrugged. They hadn't even managed to get the kid's name off of him, between the chattering teeth at first, and then the simple chattering. He'd probably said it in there somewhere, but he'd also said more things than the Doctor thought even he could manage.

He ran the sonic screwdriver over the kid one more time as the boy tugged on their hands, trying to drag them closer to see Santa. The readings hadn't changed from the last two scans — one completely recovered, completely rare, completely human child, approximately six years of age, with more energy than you could shake a stick at.

"What's that?" the boy asked, for the seventh time, but this time he actually looked like he was waiting for an answer.

"It's a sonic screwdriver," the Doctor replied, because even if the boy wouldn't get it, at least it was an honest answer.

"Really?" All juvenile enthusiasm and wide-eyed fascination, the child stared at the whirring device in the Doctor's hands. The Doctor wondered why he was finding those green eyes so strangely familiar.

"Yes, really," the Doctor replied proudly.

There was another moment of fascination, and then the kid blinked up at him, quite innocently. "Who looks at a screwdriver and says, 'this could be a little more sonic'?"

Rose nearly choked herself trying not to laugh too hard while the Doctor stood there, flabbergasted. No. Could it…

The boy let go of their hands. "This is my stop," he said, and just as mysteriously as he'd entered their world, he was gone again, alive and energetic and unafraid.

He walked up to an extremely harried looking couple with a pushchair, and insinuated himself between them, as if they'd merely been holding his place in the queue. The Doctor watched him, and held Rose's hand while she leaned into his shoulder to watch, too. The boy was next in line to see Santa at this point, and the Doctor supposed even being shut up by Tetraps could be forgotten for Santa Claus.

"They didn't even notice he was missing," Rose murmured.

She seemed to be talking about the boy's parents, and more to the point, she seemed to be right. The Doctor shook his head and shrugged, as the parents seemed to be deep in some sort of chaotic discussion with other parents in the queue. Granted, their rescue child had gotten into the most trouble, but one of the others was trying to climb one of the vast Christmas trees, and another was dropping gumdrops onto the lap of the baby in the pushchair, so wandering off might be par for the course with that crowd.

"D'you s'pose we'll ever know what the experiment even was?" Rose asked.

The Doctor shook his head. "I hope not," he said, and Rose nodded her fervent agreement. They stood and watched tiny robotic fairies float around the enormous center tree, lighting hundred of candle-shaped fairy lights as they went.

"We did good, didn't we?" Rose asked in a small voice. "Just one, we did good, right?"

The Doctor blinked down at her, astonished to see such worry in her beautiful bright eyes. "Course we did," he said, firmly, though he'd wondered it himself from time to time. Did saving just one ever do enough?

Rose straightened, abruptly, and the sorrow left her eyes, replaced by the fire inside her that could never go out. "Have to start somewhere," she said. "Do what we can, even if it doesn't seem like it'll do any good. At least we saved somebody."

The Doctor nodded, and grinned, so proud of her his hearts didn't have enough room for it all. "Sometimes the one you save saves you," he said, the absolute truth that made his life worth living now.

Rose beamed and threw her arms around his neck, and the Doctor laughed and lifted her up. They twirled a little in the tinsel and glitter, until the crowd around them stopped smiling indulgently and started muttering. At that, they pushed their way to the edge of the railing of Santa's domain, and watched the busy grouping with their rescued kid in the middle of it.

"Oh, Franklin," said the mother, "Grey's crying, can you see what's wrong?"

"Go ahead, son," the father said to the boy, ruffling the sandy blond hair as he leaned over the pushchair to check on the smaller child. The Doctor beamed to watch as the kid they'd saved charged toward the mall Santa, as happy as if his day had never had any interruptions at all.

"Oh ho ho, little man," said Santa, "and what do you want for Christmas?"

They didn't hear, but it didn't matter. The boy met their eyes one last time, and waved at them, and then he pointed up above their heads. After that, they may as well have vanished for all the attention he wanted to give the Time Lord and Rose, in comparison to the red-clad man with the snowy beard.

"Never changes," said Rose, laughing almost ironically. "Worst Christmas ever, but I got to hang out with Father Christmas, so I was happy." She grinned, then. "Course, that was the year I got my red bike, so it was also the best Christmas. Hope this is that kid's best Christmas."

"Think it might be," the Doctor said, still peering up at what the boy had so blithely pointed out to him. "He didn't stop talking about his family once his teeth stopped chattering. And you know something, Rose, I think we might've saved more than one world, this time."

Rose grinned. "It happens that way, though. We can do one tiny right thing, and everything changes." She paused. "What're you looking at, anyway?"

"One tiny right thing," the Doctor said, and he pointed, quite hopefully, at the mistletoe.

"My mum's not missing us yet," Rose said, and the Doctor was confused about this for the entire time it took her to wrap her small hand around his tie and drag him toward her.

After that, everything made sense for quite awhile.


End file.
